World Honey Bee Day Greetings!

A day for honey bees? Does that seem to be taking things too far? Not really, when we pause to think how important they are. Bees pollinate around one-third of food crops and 90 per cent of wild plants (wild plants = food for livestock + all animals in the world, directly or indirectly!). Food for all life on earth will wind down to zero without plants propagating. And that is not possible without bees.

The economic value of bees’ worldwide pollination work is estimated at Euro 265 billion. But what intrigues me is, even if we could pay the price, how on earth would pollination happen? Surely we are not going to be able to do it manually or mechanically!

Bees–and by extension, we–are in trouble. It is estimated that one-third of UK’s bee population has disappeared in the last decade. 24 per cent of Europe’s bumblebees are threatened with extinction. In India, farmers in Odisha reported in a recent study that population of some bees had declined by about 80 per cent.

But why are bees declining? Habitat loss, climate change (research shows that pollinating insects are particularly sensitive to this), intensive farming methods and colony collapse disorder (CCD) are some of the major reasons. Some pesticides are the most direct risk to bee populations.

So what can we do? ‘Go green’ is the obvious answer. No pesticides, ecological farming, planting local flowering trees and plants are the mantras.

Interestingly Karnataka, where I live, is the first State to moot a State Insect. As per news reports, this will be the honey bee! The exact species it seems, is yet to be decided. But a good step forward.

And another interesting bit of information that I came across: India has something called a National Bee Board under the Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India. ‘The main objective of the National Bee Board (NBB) is overall development of Beekeeping by promoting Scientific Beekeeping in India to increase the productivity of crops through pollination and increase the Honey production for increasing the income of the Beekeepers/ Farmers.’

World Honey Bee Day (which began as National Honey Bee Day in the US), is celebrated on the 3rd Sunday of August.

The UN however celebrates May 20 as World Bee Day. It marks the birthday of Anton Jansa, 18th century pioneer of modern bee-keeping techniques.